Chen crouched behind the barrier's left edge, his crossbow's string still vibrating from the missed shot. Buster hunched to the right, chainsaw held in white-knuckled grips that betrayed his terror despite his awakened status.
Their heartbeats thundered in Zeph's ears like war drums; rapid, panicked, the rhythm of prey realizing they'd cornered a predator instead of the helpless victim they'd expected.
Chen's hands shook as he fumbled with another crossbow bolt. "We're not the same people you used to push around, Ghost. We've got power now."
As if to prove his point, Chen's eyes began to glow with faint blue light. The crossbow steadied in his grip, moving with mechanical precision as some kind of accuracy enhancement took hold. When he pulled the trigger, the bolt flew with supernatural precision straight toward Zeph's center mass.
Twang! Swoosh!
Zeph sidestepped the projectile without breaking stride.
The bolt struck the concrete where he'd been standing, punching through the reinforced material like it was cardboard. Whatever skill Chen had acquired, it packed considerably more force than his baseline capabilities should have allowed.
"Enhanced accuracy and power shot," Zeph noted clinically, still walking toward them. "Decent combo for a ranged build. Too bad you're fighting someone who can actually move."
Buster snarled and revved his chainsaw, the mechanical roar echoing off the bridge's superstructure. His eyes flashed red, and suddenly his movements became faster, more aggressive. Some kind of berserker enhancement, trading tactical thinking for raw physical capability.
'They both made their first upgrades,' Zeph realized, watching Buster charge toward him with enhanced speed and Chen reload with supernatural dexterity. 'Probably E-rank skills, maybe even D-rank if they got lucky with their tutorial rewards.'
Zeph didn't underestimate the amount of skill points they could have made from their tutorial dungeon. It was after all, a welcome dungeon by the system for noobs and so it surely gave impressive rewards.
Still...
It didn't matter.
Skills without tactical experience were just elaborate ways to die!
Buster reached him first, chainsaw sweeping in a wide arc that would have bisected anyone too slow to avoid it. But his berserker enhancement came with a predictable cost; his technique became wild, telegraphed, entirely dependent on overwhelming opponents through raw aggression.
Zeph activated Phantom Step.
The technique carried him three feet to the left in the space between heartbeats, letting the chainsaw pass harmlessly through empty air while positioning him perfectly for a counter-attack. Phantom came up in a reverse grip, the wide blade slashing across Buster's extended wrist.
Blood sprayed across the concrete as Buster screamed, his enhanced strength suddenly useless with severed tendons. The chainsaw clattered to the ground, still running but no longer under his control.
Twang!
Chen's second shot whistled past Zeph's ear, close enough to ruffle his hair but not close enough to matter. His accuracy skill was impressive, but it couldn't compensate for targeting an opponent who refused to stay in the same place for more than a second.
Realizing his ranged advantage was compromised, Chen dropped his crossbow and drew the short spear from his back. His movements carried the fluid coordination of enhanced agility as he settled into a combat stance that suggested actual training.
He thrust forward with the spear, the point aimed at Zeph's center mass with mechanical precision. His accuracy enhancement was still active, making the attack unnaturally precise despite the weapon change.
But precision without unpredictability was just another form of telegraphing.
Zeph flowed around the thrust like water, his enhanced agility carrying him inside Chen's guard where the spear's length became a liability instead of an advantage. Phantom swept up in a diagonal cut that Chen barely managed to deflect with his weapon's shaft.
The impact sent vibrations through both weapons, but Chen's awakened strength let him maintain his grip. He spun the spear in a practiced pattern, using its length to create space while looking for an opening.
'He's actually competent,' Zeph realized, parrying another thrust that came closer than he'd expected. 'Better than I gave him credit for.'
Chen's spear work was technically sound, his enhanced skills providing accuracy and power that made each attack genuinely dangerous. But his patterns were textbook perfect, the kind of basic techniques meant to be used in controlled environments against cooperative sparring partners.
Unfortunately, there was nothing cooperative about Zeph!
Zeph had learned his fighting in places where mistakes meant death and creativity trumped orthodoxy every time.
When Chen committed to a powerful overhead thrust, Zeph didn't try to block or deflect.
Instead, he activated Phantom Step and ghosted three feet to the side, letting the spear point drive harmlessly into the concrete while positioning himself at the perfect angle for a counter-attack.
Phantom took Chen across the ribs as he tried to recover from his missed strike, the force-enhanced blade opening a deep gash that sent him stumbling toward the bridge's edge. His spear clattered from nerveless fingers, the shaft bouncing once before rolling toward the barrier.
Both enemies wounded, their primary weapons lost, their skills either exhausted or useless at close range.
The fight was over. Now came the cleanup.
Buster was on his knees, cradling his ruined wrist and trying to activate some kind of healing ability. The red glow of his berserker skill had faded, leaving him pale and shaking from blood loss and shock.
"Please," he gasped, looking up at Zeph with tears streaming down his dirt-stained face. "I'm sorry, okay? We were just... we were scared. You've been terrorizing people for years, and when we got power, we thought..."
"You thought you could kill me," Zeph finished, his voice utterly flat. "You coordinated an ambush. You waited for me to return when I'd be tired and vulnerable. You shot to kill, not to wound or scare."
He raised Phantom, the blade's edge catching the late afternoon light.
"That makes this self-defense."
The katana came down in a single, precise stroke that separated Buster's head from his shoulders. The body toppled forward without a sound beyond the wet splash of blood hitting concrete.
Chen tried to crawl away, his wounded state reducing him to desperate, animalistic movements as he clawed at the concrete with bloody fingers. His awakened enhancements still gave him speed that would have challenged a baseline human, but blood loss was rapidly negating those advantages.
Zeph walked after him without hurry, matching Chen's desperate pace effortlessly. When the wounded man finally looked back over his shoulder, hoping to see his pursuer several steps behind, he instead found storm-gray eyes studying him with detached curiosity.
Chen's face crumpled with despair as he realized escape was impossible. He rolled onto his back, one hand pressed against his bleeding ribs, the other raised in a futile gesture of surrender.
Zeph didn't bother drawing out the moment or delivering some dramatic final line.
Phantom punched through Chen's chest and emerged from his back with barely a whisper of displaced air. The man's eyes widened in shock, then slowly glazed over as his body went limp against the concrete.
Zeph withdrew his blade and wiped it clean on Chen's jacket, the motion as automatic as breathing. Two corpses leaked their life onto the concrete around him, staining the gray surface with spreading pools of red.
He felt nothing. No satisfaction, no regret, no dramatic sense of closure or revenge. They'd been problems that needed solving, and now they were solved.
The emotional weight was exactly the same as disposing of any other threat to his survival.
'Should probably move the bodies before they attract scavengers or hollows,' he thought, already planning the most efficient disposal method.
His enhanced hearing picked up the distant sound of something large moving through the ruins below; probably drawn by the scent of fresh blood. He had maybe ten minutes before the local scavenger population arrived to investigate.
Plenty of time to collect anything useful from the corpses and disappear before the feeding frenzy began.
This was just another day in the ruins, solved with the same practical efficiency that had kept him alive for three years.